Alms
by Tastes of Strawberries
Summary: [sweeney todd&pirates of the caribbean, AU] First impressions can't always be explained. Very mild NorringtonLucy.


**Author's note:** The following crossover defies time and space. I realize that logically, Pirates and Sweeney can't be merged due to the time period, among other things. But even the PotC canon makes mistakes. If you'd just kindly suspend your disbelief for about 900 words, I'd really appreciate it. Don't tell me how it couldn't happen. I know it couldn't happen, logically. Judge the writing, not the probability of this occurring.  
This is a gift-ish for Mel.

x

There was something he liked about her.

Perhaps it was the way she walked. She stumbled as she inched towards him, and he could tell that each step was a struggle for her. She was dragging her one foot just a bit. It wasn't even enough to be a proper limp, and he thought that perhaps if it were a proper limp he might have liked her a little less. Her gait reminded him of what his was like when he was near drunk, but his recollection of those times wasn't so keen, and his only indication of his own pace had been his shadow. Even if his memory was wrong, he still had sympathy for her when he saw her tripping over cobblestones, so it still could have been her walk.

It could also have been her voice. She barked after him when he didn't turn around to see her, and continued when he did. It was a sharp, shrill voice that broke the silence like lightning breaks a stormy sky. It was a voice he liked. It was a voice he hadn't heard coming from the lips of other women. It was a voice that made him sad, but not because it reminded him of a voice he'd heard before. It was a voice that held its own sadness, but its own power as well. He could have liked her simply because of the voice, but he wasn't sure it was that that he really liked.

It was probably because he could tell she'd been abused before. Someone was supposed to take care of her. Someone was supposed to be her everything, and that someone wasn't doing a good job. He knew that if she'd been properly watched, properly loved, she would have stayed beautiful. He knew that she'd been beautiful once, for beautiful women never really stopped being beautiful, and when he tried to imagine her as beautiful again, he dredged up old memories he thought he'd buried. So he stopped trying. No sense getting himself worked up enough to kill a good man simply because an old beggar might have looked like his wife before she was left to rot.

Whatever it was, he liked her quite a lot. It was a strange sort of liking, for it came with a bit of pain, and it wasn't like the pain of heartache that had come with liking before. It was sympathy, he thought, or understanding, or a sense of common ground. They were equals. It never occurred to him that being on the same level as a beggar woman was something to feel ashamed of. He was ashamed that she had been brought down to where he was. He was ashamed that she needed to beg from him, a man who had lost all he'd had, and he was also ashamed that he couldn't give her more than he did.

x

There was something she liked about him.

There was definitely something she really liked about him, and it could have been the way he spoke to her when she called after him. First of all, he turned around, which already made him earn her respect. Most of the gentlemen she'd begged from had shoved her away, but then again he really wasn't much of a gentleman, though he might have been a long time ago. It was hard to imagine him as such, what with his messy state and his unshaven face. Most gentlemen went for shaves, she remembered.

She could smell the seaside when the wind blew past him. Perhaps he was a sailor, and all sailors were generous like the young man she'd met, but he didn't look like a proper sailor to her, even though he smelled like salt and various other things her addled brain connected with the sea.

He spoke to her, too, after he faced her, and that was more than anyone had done. Normally they didn't even look her in the eye because they didn't want to see her, and if they did want to see her, then they didn't want to talk to her. It was also the way he spoke to her that she liked. Like he wasn't just talking to her to get what he wanted. Like he cared enough to want to respond to her cries.

Perhaps he responded because he felt a connection with her, and perhaps that was why she'd talked to him in the first place. Perhaps she was more inclined to pester him because he looked like he'd been sleeping in the gutter, and she'd slept in worse than that. It was a nice change to get sympathy from someone who hardly had any pity to spare for someone else because their life was rough to begin with. It was a nice change to be looked at for once. Normally her chosen targets looked down on her.

Maybe it was all of this that made her like him. She liked him more than the man she'd begged from this morning, and the one from the night before, and even more than the sailor boy from weeks before. She was sure there were others she liked less than him, but she couldn't be sure of who they were. Her memory was weak. In a few days she would mix this man up with all the rest, putting a different face with his voice, or a different walk with his legs, or a different cut to his hair. So she might as well hound him while she could.

"'ey, mister," she called again, even though he'd already given her all the change he could spare. A silly grin broke out on her face.

He turned around again. She really did like the fellow.


End file.
